Thursday, February 23, 2012

Is Django Suitable?

I got a long list of requirements from a firm that's looking to build a related family of web sites. They were down to a Django vs. Ruby-on-Rails decision.

As you can see, they've done their homework in thinking through their needs.

I grouped their "high-level requirements" into several categories. I summarizes the fit with Django here, and provided into details separately.

Authentication. Django supports flexible logins and Python makes it easy to adapt other security API's. Django and Python assure that this is a solid 10.

Shared Code. This is handled through Python features that are central to the Django framework. Shared code management -- with appropriate overrides and customization -- is part of Python and a 10.

Database Access. While Django provides the necessary access features, database scalability depends on the implementation of the database engine itself. There are numerous parallelization features that must all be used to maximize database throughput. Even though the real responsibility for performance is outside Django, the Django flexibility results in a 10.

AJAX and Javascript. Django supports the necessary RESTful API's. However, Django treats JavaScript as simple static content, offering little specific support. Since JavaScript support is not an essential part of Django, perhaps this is only a 5.

Applications. The various applications described in the requirements are more-or-less irrelevant to Django. They can be built easily, but are not first-class features of Django. In the sense of easy-to-develop, this is a solid 10. In the sense of already-existing-applications, this may be a 5 if the applications are part of a community like Pinax. Because the applications do not already exist, this may also be a 0.

API. Python allows use of any API. Django's transparent use of Python makes it easy to build API's. This is a feature of Python and scores 10 out of 10.

Usability and Developer Skills. Django's ease-of-use is a direct consequence of the Python programming language. The developers of Django make excellent use of the Python language, giving this a 10.

Performance, Access and Scalability. For the most part, Django performance comes from consideration of the purpose of all layers of the architecture. Principle design features include keeping static content separate from dynamic content (reducing Django's workload), and optimizing the database (to hande concurrent access well). Django provides several internal design features to minimize memory. Django encourages proper separation of concerns, giving a 10.

In each of these areas, it's possible to dive into considerable depth. It was tempting to offer up proof-of-concept code for some of the questions.

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About Me

Steven F. Lott is a consultant, teacher, author and software developer with over 35 years of experience building software of every kind, from specialized control systems for military hardware to large data warehouses to web service API's.